Saturday, December 06, 2008

Those who know me know that I am a great lover...of pie. I am partial to Cherry Crumb but I am by no means limited to cherry. Apple, Boston Cream, Raspberry, Rhubarb even banana cream. My taste buds are open to all and I reject nothing out of hand.

But cake? Well cake is a different matter. I love cake, make no mistake. But I am a bit finicky. I prefer yellow cake with a chocolate butter cream frosting. None of the "Double-death by chocolate with extra slabs of chocolate wedged in it" nonsense. Cakes with the density of peat moss. When such items are wheeled around on the desert tray I trun up my nose. My philosphy is simple: Keep it light and moist.

However...

There are the so-called "Art" cakes. Cakes that aren't created to be eaten so much as to be admired for their artistic beauty. I confess to a fondness for these wonders. I admire the skill of these bakers in the same way I admire ice sculpture. The technical challenges of working in a suger or water based media are many.

But there are only so many great artists in the world. For every Keneth Branagh there is a Keanu Reeves. For every 'Gladiator' there is 'Dungeon Siege: In the name of the King'. So I present to you: Cake Wrecks. A wonderful compendium of awfullness. Enjoy.

Wednesday, December 03, 2008

I visited some friends in Michigan two weeks ago and came away shaken. Their place, despite having two big dogs, was spotless. It was organized. And while I've always been a bit of a pack rat, I wouldn't say my place is a pig sty.

But it is.

The main part of our house isn't too bad at all. Rossana keeps it pretty neat and clean. But my office? My fortress of solitude whose condition I am solely responsible for? It is, in a word, awful. So I've spent the past week cleaning up. Really cleaning. Throwing out old magazines and paperwork. Cleaning off my desk. Dusting. Filing things.

It's not sexy or exciting work. It does not involve travel to exotic lands or dangerous characters, but it was long overdue. I must admit that a few times I got distracted by looking at art or stories or ideas I was playing with 20 years ago or so. But here was planty of crap too. And it had to go. It's a process I recommend. Cathartic and yet meditative.

Then I looked around the house and I realized that we just hadn't had time during the season to do much more that keep up with the mess generated by our work/lives. Try to keep on top or it. Put stuff away, send off packages, sweep up a little. But in truth the place hadn't been thoroughly cleaned since June.

Since Rossana was having a client over for a past life regression I helped really clean up today. But after a good vacuuming the carpet still looked...unvacuumed. Being a man I new that the only answer was a tool. But I'm tired of renting the rug cleaner from the hardware store. The whole miserable process sucks. Instead, we went on the internets and did some research. In the end we bought a run cleaner at Walmart. In this craptastic economy we've tried to keen a lid on unneeded expenses. But this purchase was am absolute necessity. We called it an x-mas gift for the house.

I ran it over what appeared to be the mostly clean and freshly vacuumed living room carpet. It was not clean. Not by a long shot. The machine extracted buckets of pure evil. I was so excited by the results that I gleefully cleaned most of the carpets in the house. (I am sure the novelty of this task will soon wear off) I swear I will never go a year between carpet cleanings again. Hell maybe I'll do it once a month. You could eat off our carpet now. It's exciting, in a mundane and domestic kind of way.